Why is a castle called a rook?

I said it was a boat in coastal parts of India. In other parts of India, it was a chariot. I made no assumption. I work from evidence.

I think H.J.R. Murray’s contention that the English rook is derived from a Persian word for chariot is the best answer to the OP’s question. At the same time, Murray’s claim is not without problems.

History is hard when evidence is thin. Vital is tolerance for ambiguity and recognition that we can only offer qualified possibilities without ever being certain. Murray does this well.

Batgirl also reads Murray.

Your understanding that it is a chariot is based on glyphs from China (thousands of miles from where the game originated) dating from centuries after the game originated. Very unconvincing evidence. No chess/chaturanga pieces from the earliest centuries of the game in India survive, so what the original piece might have been cannot be determined with any great certainty. Whether the original piece was a chariot (as in much older Vedic texts concerning war in India) or a boat (much more common in Indian warfare--especially in the delta regions--at the time chaturanga originated) is unknown. Finally, you provide no link between the original Indian names for the pieces and modern English. What would be the relevance of anything you have said?

1) Are you suggesting that the original Indian chaturanga pieces were engraved flat discs? And Islam has spread to vast areas of India. Should I then expect to see men dressed in thobes riding camels through the streets there? Cultures often borrow ideas from each other, but almost invariably put their own stamp on them.

2) Can you explain why the European rook looks nothing like a chariot if it's supposed to be a copy of Indian pieces? Or why there are old Indian sets with boats and no chariots?

3) That still doesn't explain how that word got to English. Chess got to Europe through the Arabs, who had no chariots, who discouraged carving figures of men or animals because it was felt that was a type of idolatry, and their name for our "rook" sounds nothing like that.

4) My scepticism concerning the certainty of your conclusions, your claim to be the smartest one here, and your ability to teach the rest of us "the truth" is perfectly legitimate.

When you’ve shared a video on YouTube in a thread, you do not need to share the same video seven more times.

1) I am asking you these questions because you seem to change "the truth" from one post to the next. You admit that Chinese "chess" pieces are not copies of Indian pieces, yet you claim that we can look at pieces from Persia or Uzbekistan (also cultures different from India, located far from the place the game originated, and created centuries later) and see what the original chaturanga pieces looked like because these later foreign carvings MUST be copied from older Indian pieces. Why is it inconceivable that other cultures carved pieces to their own tastes?

FYI--The only Islamic nations in Europe (Albania, Kosovo and Bosnia) were converted by the Ottomans, with no connection to Spain.

2) Yes, no one said that picture was of an ancient Indian set--stop putting words into other posters' mouths. But by your own logic, a modern Russian set must be copied from an older set. Also, the Russian word for the rook means boat.

3) Again, no one has disputed that Persian and Sanskrit names for "chariot" are very similar. That still offers no explanation of how the word "rook" came to be used for that chess piece in England.

4) I believe that you are telling the truth as you know it to the best of your ability. The problem is that NO ONE has sufficient evidence to lay claim to indisputable truth on many of these questions. It is your idea that others should take your word for it and admit they are mistaken that can't be taken seriously.

A castle is called a rook because book, cook and hook were already taken.

A few facts I picked up at the UC Berkeley library today:

Chess was introduced to England by Viking marauders that made themselves overlords of much of Britain (as well as part of France) starting in the mid-9th century. The earliest written reference to chess in England is the mention of Canute, King of Denmark and England, learning the game in Rome in 1027. There are numerous mentions of early Plantagenet monarchs playing the game.

These Vikings' chess sets (oldest is the "Lewis" pieces dating from the 13th century) have no pieces resembling chariots. Vikings did not use chariots, and it is highly unlikely that they even knew what a chariot was. The "rooks" in these early sets were simply warriors, similar to pawns but the size of the knights and bishops. They are often biting their shields or displaying some sort of "wild" behavior, meaning they likely represent berserkers.

An Old Norse (and Old Icelandic) word "hroki", meaning to fill to overflowing, also came to be used to denote someone overly aggressive, erratic and raucous. The term, modified to "hrokr", was given to the bird species Corvus Frugilegus. The English (and Old Danish) words for this bird are "rook" (roogh).

The Icelandic word for the chess piece we call a rook is hrokur, which also means Corvus Frugilegus. It seems possible that the English took our word for the chess "rook" from the same source from which they received the game itself.

Just a few points:

You want us to believe that you can tell us what the original Indian chaturanga pieces looked like by citing the evidence of Chinese pieces that look nothing like what you say the Indian pieces must have been, or that the Persian-style pieces (the oldest of which was found in Uzbekistan) must have been faithful copies of the Indian. I remain unconvinced.

The Russian word for the rook is the same as the Russian word for boat and sounds nothing like the Persian/Sanskrit word.

You have as yet provided no link between the Sanskrit and Persian words and the modern English word.

When you provide NO evidence for some of your claims, how can that amount to "a preponderance"?

It has been pointed out the you are wholly and completely in error in what you claimed regarding some of these languages. Rather, your own private ideas about the nature of the language and the meaning of terms within was given priority over comprehension.

My knowledge of Russian is limited, so perhaps you can elucidate a couple of points concerning their word for "rook". (Sorry, I have no cyrillic keyboard.) The "lad'ya" seems to be an old word, superseded at some point by "ladka". Most online translators yield the English word rook, for the chess piece, but boat, shallop, and longboat sometimes come up. This would explain the ships in Russian chess sets where towers or chariots are more common in other cultures.

Was the softer sound of the earlier word just dropped in the 17th-century revision of the alphabet? Does the old word have a Scandinavian origin dating from Ruirik's time? Was the term different in Cyrill's original Old Slavonic? Thanks for any information you can provide.

That neither the name "rook" nor the chariot-shaped piece it represents traveled to Scandinavia through Russia. As there were no chariots or Persian/Sanskrit words for them in Norse, how could these come to England with the Norsemen that brought chess to the British Isles?

And of course the English word "rook" does NOT mean castle. The various meanings "rook" does have in English are a bird, a scoundrel, a cheat, a clergyman, and the chess piece.

Remember that the original question concerns English chess terms, specifically WHY this word is attached to this chess piece.

I am still alive enough to post here, so apparently you are mistaken (again).

It is from the Persian “rukh” which is a chariot that (I think) is an elephant with a thing on it that looks like a castle. Eventually, the elephant was removed and we were left with only the castle (in chess).

Englishmen colonized India in the 18th-19th centuries. Chess had been played in England since the 13th century. Was time travel involved in your "explanation" or are you just extremely ignorant?

The question is, How did this Persian word supposedly get to England? The rooks in English chess pieces do not look like chariots, chess came to England with the Norsemen who had neither chariots no any knowledge of the Persian language, and all the other nations around England have rooks that look like towers and are called towers.

Wrong again. The lineage of chess in England is:

Norway and Denmark > England

The bit you have yet to explain is how the name of the piece got to Norway and Denmark.

Among other things, but at least your posts are entertaining.

The Normans were not French. They were Norsemen (from Scandinavia) that invaded Normandy, formed only a thin upper class, and during a dispute with other Norsemen who had taken over the rule of parts of England sailed over and captured the "English" vikings' kingdom. I don't believe Charlton Heston played any part in any of this.